Stone Cold Dead: Paradox Cancel East Vs. West

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This is a shame. In a joint statement with developers DB Logic, publisher Paradox have announced that East vs. West: A Hearts of Iron Game has been cancelled. EvW was a grand strategy game set during the cold war, in which you made decisions about the fate of the world under the constant threat of a doomsday clock counting down to nuclear oblivion. The idea was that you could play out alternate histories like delaying the foundation of Israel, or maintaining the Berlin wall, but your every aggressive action might move you closer to mutually assured destruction.

Alas, it wasn’t to be.

Here’s what it would have been:

The statement posted on the Paradox forums explains that the decision was taken due to the number of delays the game has suffered, but doesn’t offer any detail as to the cause of those delays. I’d all but given up hope that we would never see the game when Paradox hadn’t mentioned it for over a year, so this isn’t exactly a shock, just a disappointment.

This isn’t the first time Paradox have cancelled a game. In a not-so-mutual, more aggressive statement in 2012, Paradox pulled the plug on Magna Mundi, a grand strategy game ambitious enough that even Europa Universalis paled alongside. There were fewer nice words said about the developer of that game – and for their part, that developer later threatened to sue – so the situation this time around seems more amicable.

The saddest thing is that my dreams of playing one continuous game from 1066 to 1991 (and beyond?) are for now shattered. What will happen to the Scot-Aztec Catholic Empire? Only fan fiction will know now.

It is a bit disappointing, but I like that Paradox is focussing on quality as they did make a few missteps in the past (SotS 2 for example).

Personally, I’m really hoping they announce a Victoria 3 as I’d love to see my CK2 -> EU4 experience continue. Glad to hear it was a more mutual decision this time – sometimes despite all the best intentions, a game just does not work and you have to cull it.

However the thread on the Paradox forum is just full of bile and vitriol, which is a shame and reminds me why I don’t hang out there. Forums seems to become so caustic, ruled by a minority of opinionated fans who like to shout down anyone who disagrees with them. I am certain that had Paradox released a game they felt was buggy and not up to quality the forum community would have lambasted them. Forum folks: not everything is a conspiracy! Sometimes you can’t win :)

yeah, the general community is a bit douchbag heavy, but the AAR community is really great and allways encurages people who write good aars, especially giving help to those writing it in narration style. This is especially true for the ck2 and vicky2 aar communities, but also the small hoi3 aar community. They are never really pricks as those stupid people in the other sub forums

Might be there’s a lot of bile because a lot of people are very pissed off about yet another game going under, this time just weeks from a supposed release, because PI said so without giving any real reason. The community relationship with the publisher (PI) here is crap, and all the NDAs prevent the actual devs (BL) from explaining anything.

That forum was far, far less negative before the “open beta” and “cancellation” announcements. And a lot of fans were willing to step up and donate to an incomplete beta to get it through to final release. PI/BL got a lot of people’s hopes up in the weeks before the cancellation with promises of a release no matter what, and then comes this hammer and no serious reasoning given for anything.

I’m all for QA in games and not releasing bugged crap, but I and the vast majority of fans seem to have preferred a bugged and incomplete game over absolutely nothing ever, especially when told the game was nearly finished for a while.

I’m afraid I disagree with you on a few points. Some of the forum members may have been quite positive after the indefinite delay announcement but quite a few threw their toys out of the pram.

It’s also perfectly normal for NDAs to cover this type of event, so I don’t understand why so many are angry at Paradox for not saying anything. It’s still relatively clear that targets weren’t being met and hadn’t been for a while, hence the original indefinite delay. There may well be some other underlying issues but the lack of progress in the game over the past couple of years has been noticeable, even from just the few dev diaries and developer posts that have been made.

An ‘open beta’ or ‘permanent-beta’ would still have carried Paradox’s name (and would have had to as clausewitz is their engine) so that wouldn’t have been an option.

You do realise that paradox interactive don’t work for you? They’re not responsible to you in any way. They are not your employee. They make products, put them on sale and if you like them you can buy them. They do not owe you any kind of explanation. They do not owe you any completed product or beta. They do not need to so much as speak to you at all, at any time, ever.

Do you understand that? I know the entitled hyper critical internet generation think the entire world owes them a complete audit of everything they ever do but… you’re incorrect. End of story. The game is cancelled for whatever reason they saw fit. Thanks for your time. Now go away.

A real shame. I was really looking forward to a Cold War/contemporary grand strategy game. It’s no secret East vs. West had been languishing for a while, but I suppose I never quite expected this. Let’s hope they pick up the concept again in the near future.

That’s a shame. I was really looking forward to this. Games in this time period (especially on a larger scale) are rare and if one might have pulled off the grand strategy approach properly it would have been Paradox. Although I guess striking the balance between simulating history and player freedom/a sandbox approach is especially hard for this period. (HOI3 already struggled with this. I’m really hoping part 4 will give me the option to try and avoid the war altogether or maybe keeping the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and see how everything turns out.)

I guess this is a good thing in the long run, in that it’s Paradox being unafraid or unwilling to pull the plug on things rather than release something that’s not good enough. Probably a bit of a blow for the developers, but surely better than having to slog through the release of a bad game and then have it bomb anyway.

When the usual case is that failed games are pushed out anyway (because there is no other source of income) or alternatively, when canning a big project means the whole studio collapses or downsizes; It is a luxury to work for a studio that can develop its own ip and afford failed experiments like this. Hopefully only good will come of it, paradox are the current bane of my free-time and long may they continue to be so.

Certainly more depressed about this than the lame Thief sequel or even the Sim City fiasco. They were really trying to branch out of the Pandora’s box with this title, but instead we just get a new HOI4, yay, more WW2 because that’s not done to death 3 times over…

EvW promised actual freedom and more than one hammer to hit more than one type of fixation object. So, back to pre-modernity or WW2 again again it is.

Also note that PI first promised fans an open beta prior to cancellation (which many rightly saw as a “soft cancellation”, yet still was officially announced as a way to avoid a full cancellation), which then itself got canceled for unclear reasons (Steam won’t do it, and we must use Steam, was all).

Frankly, I’ve stopped caring what PI does from now on. Their disregard for the fans and inability to actually stick with new IP products through development leaves me somewhat irate.

The open beta measure was a last-ditch attempt to save the game’s development.

I don’t know why you’re painting Paradox as the bad guy here. East vs. West had been languishing for a while, and I’m afraid it became evident BL Logic wouldn’t deliver a quality product in the ample timeframe the publisher expected: EvW was announced in July 2012, with development having started a while before that, and by January 2014 still was months away from a solid beta phase. And with that pseudo-beta announcement they communicated the game would suffer a reduction in scope, to boot.

We don’t know what kind of problems arose behind the scenes, but I believe PI’s leniency and final actions before the cancellation show they cared enough about the project. If they hadn’t cared, they would’ve most likely pulled the plug much sooner.

Good for PI. It would seem they learned from the SOTS 2 disaster. That game should have been canceled, too.

This isn’t about disregard for fans, this is about quality control. EvW was over 3 years in development with apparently no end in sight. I’d speculate the scope proved too much of a challenge. Hats off to them for giving it their all – you can’t win them all. Better to cut your losses and move on.

Damn, just like with Magna Mundi, I was really looking forward to trying this one. Maybe I’m in the minority but I’d prefer a buggy broken release which they work on patching up after launch rather than no game at all.

Granted, cold war is a tough era to do in a game because world conquest is completely unrealistic and shouldn’t be allowed. I’d like to see some game other than that Supreme Ruler one try it though.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone whos been following this game. repeated delays and nothing to really show off. Only ideas followed by more ideas. They were supposed to release an open beta in december, then feburary, now canceled. We have HoI4 coming anyway.